97: the butt tree, telephone disc mystery, pinocchio birdhouse, fair game, the liquor pharmacy, flajolators, vinyl bricks, dowprint, alden's place, water cannon, ace is the place, why bother, haze at river days, I just...., balloons, tridge

August 2, 2025

Bay City to Midland

Leaving the State Park Campgrounds, you can better see how crowded it is.

After taking a picture of this tree and turning back towards my bike, the guy across the road caught my attention and said, "You should take a look at THIS tree."

Yesterday I posted a picture of a telephone pole with one of these discs, and Buddy Hall let me know that they’re called “pole tags,” used to help identify which pole is which. This pole, and others I’ve seen along the way, have additional discs. I see the pole tag (Consumer 0245168), indicating that this is pole #245,168, but now I’m curious about all of the other discs. Hey Buddy, can you spare a line?

Just that one pedestrian... all other pedestrians are fair game. Makes me wonder how many people frequent the business here... just that one guy, apparently.

This pharmacy sells drugs, beer, wine, liquor, and lottery tickets. It's probably doing quite well.

Really?!? I'm only three miles from downtown Detroit???

I really hope there's a school down this road, and that their mascot is the Aters.

When I passed this house I couldn't tell what was wrong with the brick. When I turned and rode over to it I found that it isn't brick at all, it's just some type of vinyl-like material covering the house to make it look like brick, and it's peeling off.

Midland, my stop for the night, is where Dow Chemical started back in 1897 when Herbert H. Dow developed, among other things, a way to extract bromine from brine.

As a result, Midland is a "company town," which has the distinct fingerprint of Dow.

One of the places I really wanted to see was the home of Alden B. Dow, the son of Herbert Dow. He went to the University of Michigan to study engineering in anticipation of working at Dow, but left after three years and moved to New York where he graduated with an Architecture degree from Columbia University. After a year of working as an architect, he moved to Taliesin to study under Frank Lloyd Wright.

He created a canal which cut through the property, and parts of the house and studio are built right over the water. This results in fluid, shimmering reflections on the ceiling and walls. Their website says it creates a "sense of flowing movement." Part of the house is built into the ground (unusual in the 1930s), so that it blends into the landscape, something of which Wright would certainly approve. Dow designed features like low, cozy “conversation pits,” hidden nooks, and floating platforms.

He was named the architect laureate of Michigan in 1983, and this house is considered one of the top 25 Best Historic Homes in the U.S., as well as being a National Historic Landmark. Unfortunately, there were some bus tours that filled every available slot so I wasn't able to see the inside.

Me: "Got any bird murals?" Ace Hardware store employee: "Sure, just finishing one up outside. Follow me."

The Pere Marquette Rail Trail starts in Midland, and I rode it from downtown out to my AirBnB hosts west of town.

Just like in Virginia, I happened to arrive during the town's annual festival, this one called River Days (was the other one also River Days?).

Because of the Festival, I was lucky to find a place to stay, and even luckier to have hosts who offered to take me to the festival... and that's after buying me dinner.

The smoke from the wildfires was worse today than it's been yet. It's my understanding that if it's severe enough it can turn a person's hair blue, but I've never seen any evidence of it.

The best thing about River Days was the "Mass Hot Air Ballon Ascension."

You can see how compact the balloon is before it's filled. It could fit into a suitcase.

This video is the same balloon as the one pictured above. It's long, about ten minutes, but I'm posting it because I found it to be fascinating. There was a police officer asking other people to move back but he never even noticed me, enabling me to get really close to the balloon while they were filling it, and to be able to see the process. If you get bored, skip to the 4:45 mark.

Something else I lucked into, that I had wanted to see but wouldn't have been able to had my hosts not brought me to the River Days Festival: The Tridge.

"The Tridge," a contraction of "three-legged bridge," was coined by local elementary school kids during a fundraiser, and spans the intersection of the Tittabawassee and Chippewa Rivers. Also, I absolutely didn't steal this picture from the internet.

on the way back to the car: the skateboard park

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Today's ride: 30 miles (48 km)
Total: 2,572 miles (4,139 km)

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